Employer: Are you irritating your job applicants?

here is a snapshot of a reader’s post to a daily newspaper (Metro). Laura is her name. She is really annoyed by some of us. I’m a little bit ashamed of her letter.

She is currently unemployed. “Unfortunately“, as she writes. Getting a job seems really hard for her, and it’s probably a very realistic experience. But what she’s really annoyed about is that most companies are not extending themselves to a communication with the candidates about the hiring process. The problem for her and many other job seekers is that there is no feedback, no response what so ever once the application has been sent forward. Applications disappear into a thin air. All work for nothing, it probably feels. No wonder the quality of an average application is pretty low. Why bother, if the other party doesn’t? Fairly so.

“What is the HR at these companies really doing“, she asks. “Respond to us job seekers“, she demands, adding: “It’s no fun to apply for jobs, you have to communicate!”

This is a real job seeker, a real person expressing her candidate experiences publicly. Based on the discussions on a couple very popular Linked in Groups for job seeking, Laura is not alone with her irritation. And based on Laura’s experience recruiting service companies are not doing any better. One would assume at least they had the time to extend into a communication with the job seekers, as that is their core business.

The thing here is, that job seekers are desperate for feedback. The more they send applications and become rejected silently, the more they want to know how to do differently. Giving at least a little clue could be really meaningful for a job seeker. Don’t you want to do that? Don’t you want to make another person happy? Don’t you want your company to be seen as a great company treating people well?

I think we could have a win-win

The thing here is also that reading applications is not a fun job. Applications in general can be pretty boring and not telling an awful lot of interesting about the candidates, to be honest with you. If us recruiting employers and recruiters took the time and gave couple of tips to the candidates, that might make the process more fun for us too. Should we try? If not for the applicants’ benefit, for ours? I challenge you.